International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Development Online ISSN: 2349-4182 Print ISSN: 2349-5979 www.allsubjectjournal.com Volume 2; Issue 12; December 2015; Page No. 193-195 Sisterhood: A remedy for violence against woman- A special reference from ‘The Color Purple’ by Alice Walker Dr. S Meena Priya Dharshini Assistant Professor, Mother Teresa Women’s University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Abstract Violence against women, the term makes the sense of pain that is more painful than any other pain which includes the sense of fear also. There are many ways in which women suffer and are made to suffer. In behavioural terms, violence against women ranges from simple suppression to abuse, aggression, exploitation and severe oppression. It includes rape, wife beating and denial of education to girls, harassment physically as well as mentally. Thus all such kinds make the term more terrible. This paper has a function to illuminate the aspects of racial social and domestic violence against women and to demonstrate how these social paradigms of black existence actually present in the society and get fictionalized in the novel ‘The Color Purple’ of Alice Walker. Keywords: Sisterhood, Violence against woman, Child Abuse, The Color Purple, Alice Walker Introduction These are the distinguishing marks of black womanhood Violence against women, the term makes the sense of pain that In white America. is more painful than any other pain which includes the sense of fear also. There are many ways in which women suffer and are The black woman faced the reality of double violence of both made to suffer. In behavioural terms, violence against women race and society. She was a doubly burdened, doubley ranges from simple suppression to abuse, aggression, jeopardized peron paula Giddings says: exploitation and severe oppression. It includes rape, wife beating and denial of education to girls, harassment physically ….(in)the experience of Black women, (there) is the as well as mentally. Thus all such kinds make the term more relationship between sexism and racism. Because terrible. According to SNDT University’s Research Centre for both are motivated by similar economic, social and Women’s Studies: psychological forces it is only logical that those who sought to undermine Blacks were also the Violence, in general is a coercive mechanism to assert most virulent antifeminists. The means of one’s will over another, in order to prove or feel a sense oppression differed across race and sex lines. However of a power. Those in power against the powerless can the well spring of that oppression was the same. perpetuate it. It is often not even necessary to actually use physical force or inflict server injury for the main Racial and social violence coexists in a traumatic alliance threat of coercion or being disciplined to act in a manner within the life of black woman racial discrimination together required by another individual or group, it subjects with social violence proves to be a lethal combination. Women to violence. This is not necessarily confined to physical in general have to follow the roles defined for them by the violence but the creation of an atmosphere of terror, society. And who else but men comprise the society which lays a situation of threat and reprisal…. A hierarchical social down different norms for men and women. Any woman who structure has violence built into it. refuses to follow these rules is immediately condemned. The women in the novel are very heavily dependent on men in The two themes of racial and social violence are allied and have different ways. Mean is still the focal point around which the a parallel existence. Gloria wade, Gayles depicts this women’s world recoils. phenomenon through the imager of circles: Walker’s vision however is disturbing one, for she relies much upon sexual violence and physical abuse to portray black There are three major circles of reality in American generation. Typically, she brings to her work a terrible Society observance of black self-hatred and destruction. which reflect degrees of power and powerless. There is a This study speculates the related issue the racial and social large circle in which white people most of them men, violence in walker’s prize-winning novel “The Color Purple” experience influence and power. Faraway from it. male domination coupled with racial discrimination engenders There is a smaller circle, a narrow space in which black a diabolic power, which crushes ever stouthearted Sofia. Sofia’s people, regardless of sex, experience uncertainly plights stand testimony to the fact that no amount of strength of exploitation in this second circle is third, a small dark an individual can effectively attar the coordinate violence. enclosure in which black women experience pain, Racial violence can be directly seen through the incidents isolation and vulnerability. happened to Sofia as she refuses to serve mayor’s wife as maid. 193 The single negative answer made her life worse than hell. As can beat her as his is the husband of his wife. The word wife is she is black, she has no right to say ‘no’ to white man and when meant for beating. This causes the psychological violence he is a Mayor. Though in so many inscriptions the common against Celie. Even at the time of Celie’s illness, she is wanted lines have been written that blacks and whites have an equal to serve all the time. When Sofia asks Celie about her tolerance right yet in mundane life they acquaint with reality. and question as it disturbs the inner cords of her heart and she When she came back from prison and told her experiences starts burshing our her anger that how much violence she has expressing the violent treatment of whites against blacks she suffered during her life time. said, “They got me in a little store room up under the house, She says, hardly bigger than ode Sosa’s porch and just about as warm in I can’t ever remember the last time I felt mad. I say, I use to get the winter time. I’m at the beck and call all night and all day. mad at my mammy cause she put a lot of work on me. Then I They won’t let me see my children. They won’t let me see no see how sick. She is could’t stay mad at her, couldn’t be mad men. Well after five years they let me see you once a year – I’m my daddy cause no matter what ….sometimes Mr._____get on a slave she say” me pretty hand. I have to talk to old makes. But he my husband, Such a heart touching description gives us a real sense of I shrug my shoulder. This life soon be over, I say. Heaven last slavery. When she started learning driving, Mayor’s wife felt all ways”. Really, through out her life Celie suffered either from awkward that a black lady was teaching her. Not only this that physical, sexual, emotional or religious violence. As religion she is being taught by sofia a black women, the discrimination does not allow her to raise her voice against father and mother, of gender dominates to that much extent that they cannot sit no matter what they are. together. Thus, the novel’s representations of intimate familial violence, Walker says that racism is a cage. We could even say that the in so diminishing the centrality of Alphonoso’s the sept father’s jail that Sofia is held is a metaphor for all black people caged rapes of Celie, the text abandons its demystification of male by racism. For others, they do not serve time in a literal prison behavious in the family to focus on a reconstruction of the and instead are confined to servitude and domesticity whin their family. In “The Color Purple” the identify crisis that grows own homes. Thus Walker’s women characters are not mere from the violence within the family. fictional characters rather they are representatives of racist The Black male who does not and cannot withstand with society. Her characters show the dual suffering s of women in oppression turns his frustration on his wife and children. The general. How women suffer from the violence imposed on them male with no identity of his own indulges in violence. Harpo by the society and how it si doubled by the racist society. and Albert both lack identify of their own. They imitate their The novel “The Color Purple” begins with the note of violence father in taming their wives. Mr._____ reflects typical male of and we are presented with a girl who is writing to God because the society who is the cause of wife’s sufferings and his wife she feels that she has nobody else to turn to, she cannot even crushed by the power structure. pray for fear of somebody hearing her. As ‘pa’ instruct her “You The color purple is not merely the story of the characters in the better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mummy”. family rather it is intended to democratize the American literary Celie’s awakens from the act of rape, effecting her bifurcation voice to the voiceless. The color purple is to recognize the into a subject made object to itself. Rape here also intensifies suffering s of those who are caught in both inter-cultural and the negation that grows from the ongoing patriarchal intra-cultural conflicts. Walker creates a fiction wherein an subjugation of women within the family. oppressed black woman can experience self-recoveries and This gender oppression is the main factor operating in the victory over violence without a dialectical process, without oppressive paternal ideology, in which father’s control of the collective political efforts, without radical change in society.